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Monday, September 27, 2010

Will it happen? Will the king of fish, the noble, glamorous salmon become another commercially-available genetically modified (GM) species? And if so, will you eat it?
The GM salmon grows twice as fast as its wild relative. Its genes have been artificially modified to include DNA from the Pacific Chinook and from an eel-like species so that the resulting fish keeps growing all year long. AquaBounty Technologies, the Massachusetts company behind the project, has waited over ten years for this. On Monday, the FDA held a public consultation on how to label the GM salmon so that the public is aware of what kind of fish it will be buying. A detailed scientific review didn’t find anything detrimental to human health or to the environment. It seems to be just a matter of time before we can buy GM salmon in the supermarket.
Critics fear that if the GM salmon escapes the confines of their farms, they may breed with wild salmon causing havoc in the natural food chain. Salmon feeds an enormous variety of animals, from humans to grizzly bears and eagles. Those fears are unfounded. The farms are inland, far from river ways. And even if they do escape or are placed in wild waters (ecoterrorism?), the GM salmon won’t interbreed since its eggs have been designed to develop into sterile females. So, no GM offspring is possible.
Hard not to think of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when reading about what goes on with the popular reaction to any GM species. Sure, scientists are not awakening the dead or piecing together monsters with parts of dead bodies. But we are at the point where we can tweak life into different shapes and forms. The secret turned out to be biochemistry, not electricity. At their core, however, the fears remain the same almost 200 years later. In the gothic novel, the monster asks his creator for a companion. Terrified that he would help create a race of monstrous (and powerful) beings that could end up destroying humanity, Dr. Frankenstein refuses. The moral of the story is simple: some things are better off left for God.
Is that the case with genetic engineering? Absolutely not. In our days, the battle is focused on the FDA ruling on GM foods. In the case of GM salmon, the expectation is that they will go ahead and approve it. After all, the FDA allows us to eat cloned cattle, pigs, and goats. The enormous pressure commercial fisheries are suffering, coupled to the increase in global population and its appetite for high quality fish and meat, should be an encouragement to boost the production of salmon through science. Genetically engineered foods are a far cry from a sci-fi nightmare, although of course all possible precautions should be taken before a new product is launched into the marketplace or the environment.
There is, however, a potential problem. GM or not, all fish raised in captivity still need to eat. In the case of salmon, bass, tuna, and cod, all carnivore species, they consume a large amount of fish. So, oceans and rivers keep being overfished in order to feed our “aquatic cattle.” Possibly, as Paul Greenberg suggested in his book Four Fish, we should be changing our eating habits and start consuming more tilapia (a vegetarian fish) and artic char, which has a smaller environmental impact.
In any case, GM foods won’t go away. As with any discovery in science, once you open the box you can’t close it again. Better to be smart about it and make sure the science is solid so as to guarantee that these FDA rulings stand on solid ground. So far, all seems well.

I've been reading quite a bit on alternative architecture and came across a lot of info on shipping containers being used as homes and offices. This is my recent find.

Containers 2 Clinics is a nonprofit organization based in Massachusetts, converts shipping containers into health clinics

From their site:

Clinics are staffed by local health professionals in-country. C2C's approach to rural medical care is designed to strengthen the entire healthcare system of a country from the bottom up by building capacity to treat illness locally. C2C clinics focus on improving the lives of women and children through vaccinations, safe pregnancy and delivery, and health education. C2C's model allows for standard design and operations and for replication across regions.

GUN LOCO is a third-person shooter game for XBOX 360 that offers a single and multiplayer options. It's kinda like Battle Royale slash Escape from NY. What makes it stand out is its unique imagery and visual style.

From the official site:

At the far edge of the solar system.
There is a prison planet, where only the craziest criminals are sent.No Guards...No security...No rules.
Survival and escape are the only things that matter.
Survive or die... it's enough to send you GUN LOCO!
GUN LOCO is a character-driven, blood-fueled race for survival and freedom.
Set on an abandoned prison planet, a collection of the craziest criminals in the system are left to their own devices to shoot their way to survival and find a way to escape the planet.
Featuring a completely unique style, "Sprint-Action-shooter" gameplay and frantic Multiplayer mayhem, players will experience a taste of the mad, bad world of GUN LOCO!

I don't think I'd like to be trapped in a prison planet with these fellas.

Friday, September 24, 2010

Arctic sea ice coverage appears to have dropped to its lowest extent for the year as of last week, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced today (Sept. 15). Levels are the third-lowest recorded since 1979, when data were first taken, continuing the long-term trend of decreasing summer ice, according to the report.

Satellite data revealed just 1.84 million square miles (4.76 million square kilometers) of ice blanketing the Arctic Sea as of Sept. 10. Only the years 2007 and 2008 exhibited lower levels of sea ice over the past 31 years.

Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight and keeps the polar region cool, moderating global climate conditions. Sea ice has been melting more in recent years as global average temperatures rise. Less ice means that more open ocean is exposed to sunlight, absorbing it and further warming the polar regions.

This is only the third time in the satellite record that ice extent has fallen below 1.93 million square miles (5 million square kilometers), and all those occurrences have been within the past four years.

The record lows come despite a late start for the melt season this year and, according to the NSIDC data, this year will mark the fastest melt season on record if today's reported ice levels are truly the season's minimum.

Sidenote: Uh, #18 is slightly disturbing. Skill-wise I scored about 1/3. I do own some of the tools. Hell, I don't even have nunchuck skills. I can juggle though. Do I get points for that? Not so much. I'm screwed.

Rockstar has offered up a bunch of new details about the zombie-infested Undead Nightmare DLC pack, due out in autumn.

"The Undead Nightmare Pack will feature an entirely new mostly single-player campaign that follows John Marston as he tries to find a cure for the highly infectious zombie plague that has spread across the frontier," explains Rockstar.

"In addition to this epic new single-player adventure, The Undead Nightmare Pack also features brand new gameplay mechanics, weapons, zombie animals, mythical creatures and even a brand new secret location."

The developer also promises "exciting new multiplayer modes", which probably involve zombies (a survival or versus mode, we predict), and more info "very soon".

The Undead Nightmare Pack will be released on PS3 and Xbox for $9.99/800 MS Points.

Before that though, Rockstar will be releasing the 'Liars and Cheats' pack on September 21.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Since the dawn of the Industrial Age those seeking wealth, fame, and success have felt the magnetic pull: Head for the big cities. But a new study from Michigan State University indicates that fundamental changes in technology are altering that paradigm and starting to affect how the industrial world lives. This study is not the first to spot these trends, but it provides an unusually clear look at the reasons why.

The giant urban magnet

With the rise of industry came the pull of big cities: Big cities allowed businesses and industry to thrive from their close proximity to one another. The retailer could meet with the manufacturer, the manufacturer with the supplier, and all of them needed lots of workers living nearby. Supply lines were short, communication much easier and quicker, and the pooling of urban labor attracted both industry and workers.

The lure of the riches of industrialization drew the masses from the farms and towns to the big cities and fostered the growth of mega-cities like London, New York, and Tokyo -- cities the likes of which had never before existed. Teeming millions lived in packed proximity, pulling in vast rivers of food, water, raw materials and people and generating vast quantities of products, wealth, and innovation. (Along with pollution, crime, and blight -- big cities have never been all sweetness and light.)

Whereas for millenia people lived a mostly rural and small-village existence, in industrialized countries the city dweller became the norm and huge cities became the cauldrons of progress and invention, the places where innovation and hard work could be turned into great riches and fame.

With their great wealth and population huge cities also became the centers of culture, learning, and political power. And it was all because packing lots of people and commerce into close proximity created a synergy that could not happen any other way.

A paradigm change

But in the 21st century a new paradigm of industrial success is taking hold. In fact it really started in the latter half of the 20th century with the rise of air travel, which made physical location less important.

Before the popularization (and subsequent great drop in price) of air travel, to have quick access to suppliers, manufacturers, and partner businesses in a mega-city like, say, Los Angeles, meant that one had to be located in or very near Los Angeles. But the ready availability of cheap air travel meant that people and businesses in Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas and other cities all over the American West also had quick and easy access to the vast industrial and commercial resources of Los Angeles. And that meant that it was no longer so important to be located in a big city like Los Angeles (or New York, Chicago, or other mega-city industrial centers).

What was important was to be in a city, perhaps a substantially smaller city, that had ready air connections to those big industrial centers.

So cities like Phoenix and Miami grew, becoming several times larger in the 1980s than they were before the time of mass air travel in the 1950s. But while goods and people could now travel back and forth when needed, the business of everyday communication, the informal-but-essential "grease" that keeps the wheels of business turning smoothly, was still much easier with those across the street than those across the country.

Then came the Web

That all changed with the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, which ushered in the modern era of the ubiquitous Internet. Today, only a few years later, it's often much easier to have good person-to-person and business-to-business releationships with someone around the world than someone across the street. Easy, friendly relationships between busnesses and business people is no longer a major reason to locate a business in a an industrial megacity.

What the future holds

So what does the future hold? What does the business landscape look like?

According to the Michigan State study and other trend info, we're seeing and we'll continue to see a reversal of the trends of the early Industrial Revolution:

* The cities most favored by current trends are not the huge industrial centers, but smaller cities that are very networked -- they offer easy air travel to many destinations, they have the computing and data-network infrastructure to allow its business and residents to have fast, low-cost, ubiquitous connectivity to the rest of the world.
* These highly networked cities, businesses, and workers look outward for their relationships, easily building links with the rest of the world for even their most basic needs. This is the opposite of the earlier industrial mega-cities where they looked toward others in the same city for their needs, and pulled what they needed into the city.
* Many of the former industrial centers will steadily lose population, a trend already underway in former industrial power centers such as Detroit and Cleveland. Indeed, one of the challenges to the nation will be how to deal with the decline of such former industrial centers. These are often cities whose long reign as power centers have resulted in core institutions -- strong governments, strong unions, strong traditions that may date back centuries -- that make them slower to change than the Sun-belt cities to which the jobs have migrated.

Looking forward 20, 50, or 100 years from now -- a very risky thing to do, but worth considering -- these trends point to a world where the mega-cities dwindle in importance and population as well-connected smaller cities become distributed centers of inter-connected innovation and enterprise. At the same time, the networks that connect them -- physical transportation networks as well as digital communications networks -- will become ever more important. It's a relatively new vision that few foresaw even 50 years ago, but it's already happening and those will do best who anticipate it most.

Humans Vs. Zombies is a game in which a group of pre-registered players (humans) attempt to survive the growing zombie infestation on campus (posed by other players tagging the humans). The human players will be fending off the zombie players by launching foam Nerf darts at the zombie players. Humans will wear bright orange armbands on the upper arm, and zombies will wear orange bands on their foreheads.

There are very specific rules to the game so be sure to check out the official guide book for it.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Empire Drive-In (2010) is a large-scale multimedia installation and platform built out of used and salvaged materials. In its simplest description it is a drive-in movie theater made out of wrecked cars. The 01SJ Future Films program will screen in the Drive-In and include short films, features, revivals, and live cinema events. At the center of the project are 25 cars rescued from a San Jose auto wrecker. Audiences will be able to climb into cars to watch film programs throughout the festival. Low-power radio will beam stereo audio direct to each car, just like the real drive-in. Moviegoers will find snacks at the confection stand and amusement in the playground. The installation will be built indoors in San Jose’s massive South Hall. No sunsets, but no mosquitoes either.

Friday, September 17, 2010

A brief and violent storm swept through NYC on the evening of September 16, 2010. Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens were hit the hardest - leaving behind uprooted trees, torn roofs, power outages, delays in commuter rail and airports and 1 casualty.

Sidenote: This one hits close to home. My old neighborhood where my family still resides is right in the middle of the action. Thankfully the roof wasn't blown off, my family's fine and they didn't experience any power outages.

This week is a look back to 1984 and Hayao Miyazaki’s first movie that he wrote and directed. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is more than an overly optimistic vision of how humanity will act near the end. The movie also provided the necessary momentum for Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli to produce the films most associated with him (many will appear here in later discussions). I stumbled across it when Roger Ebert posted a link to a review of the movie. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I have high hopes for peace at the end of all things.

Nausicaa, the movie, follows the title character, Nausicaa, the princess of the Valley of the Wind. She’s fearless and inventive, which is exactly what you want in a lead anime character. The movie takes place 1000 years after the end of the world, caused of course by giant flame throwing robots. The imminent threat to people comes from toxic plants and giant insects. Nausicaa has the ability to calm the insects and reason with them to return to the toxic jungle. She apparently has incorporated the peace the bugs embody, except when she gets upset. As the story unfolds, we see her travel to other towns and discover the reason for the toxic jungle.

I know this sounds like the plot to a 1950’s B movie, but it makes sense as you watch. Miyazaki does a great job making the horror aspects chilling, without compromising the integrity of the overall message – that when we bring the end of the world down on our heads, we will need to re-think our relationship with nature and weapons. The watercolor palette cuts the danger, but the sharpness of the voice actors communicates what danger exists in the world.

The world that Nausicaa lives in seems almost too peaceful for being set on the verge of humanity’s end. The introduction of the military elements a quarter of the way end moves the movie into more conventional territory, but the military serves merely to illuminate the ways in which humanity fails. But even they seem less threatening than they should. It could be the watercolor palette that makes everything seem easier to contain. Or it could be that the social structure is so developed that it appears anyone could make it through the end of the world.

What I really learned from this anime is if I end up living through the apocalypse, I hope I find myself in a world like Nausicaa’s. I’d much rather deal with an avoidable toxic jungle and giant insects that only attack if provoked. They seem far less threatening than many of the other possible threats at the end of the world. I still don’t really want to deal with giant beetles with big eyes, but since the giant beetles seem reasonable, I could probably manage. Also, flying would be a great bonus, since you’d always be able to escape from harm.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is probably the most upbeat post-apocalyptic anime I’ve encountered. Don’t get used to this kind of positive spin on the end of the world. It will most likely be dead by morning.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world of scorching wastelands and nuclear winter, Race After 1977 will provide hours of fun as you race against your opponents, sliding through sand and ice, slamming opponents out of the way, and jumping onto walls to seize the advantage.

Race After 1977 takes a different approach, focusing on the setting instead of the vehicles themselves.

Opting for a post-apocalyptic stage in which the planet's surface has been ravaged by nuclear blasts and the ensuing fallout, you race to the death in intense competitions between those fortunate enough to have cars.

Developer Xpect Games promises an in-depth Story mode packed with tournaments that flesh out competition between rival post-war factions.

1970s-era trucks, muscle cars, and classic sedans will be available to race in various locales such as dilapidated New York, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

While multiplayer isn't mentioned on the game's official website, hopefully at least local play via Bluetooth or wi-fi is supported. Multiplayer would be ideal.

Race After 1977 will be available for iPhone and iPod touch some time this autumn.

A self-taught carpenter, Dan Phillips builds homes in Huntsville, TX out of recycled materials including cattle bones.
He started his own construction company back in 1997 by mortgaging his house.
The result? Phoenix Commotion.
His mission? To build affordable homes for low-income families using recycled materials.
He hires unskilled labor for a project and teaches them the necessary and valuable skills to help them with future employment.The only new materials in any of his houses are plumbing, wiring, structural elements.

He's built about 14 homes total. The estimate cost of building the 750 sq. ft. bone house is $26,000

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

SCARE for a CURE is an Austin-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that raises money for local charities, "one SCREAM at a time." Each year they produce Austin's only extreme, full contact, interactive haunted house adventure—guaranteed to chill you to the depths of your soul!

Monday, September 13, 2010

It's exactly what British indie director Marc Price did with his film Colin in about 18 months and some guerrilla ingenuity. It's been described as a zombie film with a heart told through the eyes of a zombie. And it's received quite a bit of buzz.

It's being screened through select theaters in the US.

The official Synopsis:

Our hero Colin is bitten by a zombie; he dies and returns as one of the undead. We follow him as he wanders through suburbia during the throes of a cadaverous apocalypse. Through his encounters with objects, places and people, we learn who Colin was and more pertinently, what he has now become. Including a broad daylight zombie versus human street battle, an epic housebound siege and bags of gore. Colin is the must see Zombie phenomenon of the year.

Sidenote: I really want to see this film to review it. Almost want to drive to San Antonio, it's the closest theater to show it. Anyone know of any Austin screening? Either way, I love how it shows that you can pull anything off if you just go for it.

Lego fans and Zombie fans alike - if you like either or both, prepare for nerdvana.
So I was digging around and looking for interesting things to post here and I stumbled across these nifty little stop motion films.

In Blood Drive, contestants must use their motorized death steeds of steel in a televised game show where drivers battle each other and hordes of revolting flesh eaters in an all-out fight to the death. Face undead frat boys, cops, strippers and bachelorette partiers, each with their own special brand of death and devastation - and ways to die! While these rotting monsters wander the streets of a desert sin city craving sweet, succulent brains, your enemies have come equipped battle hardened armed vehicles, including heavily weaponized muscle cars, hot rods, and more. Amidst this gore-drenched mayhem contestants must use their head or lose it!

In the game, you are in a TV show where drivers kill each other while competing against zombies. Like a mashup between Twisted Metal, Left for dead, and The Running Man.

The game allows for online multiplayer support, where players can opt in and out at any time.